Cladistics -- the science of comparison -- is transforming the way paleontologists view evolution. In Search of Deep Time strips away conventional assumptions about the evolution of life to reveal a world that may be far stranger and more humbling than had been previously imagined. The concept of deep time was first used by John McPhee to describe intervals of time incomprehensibly greater than our daily experience. Henry Gee explains the rise of cladistics as the best technique for making sense of the organic changes that unfold within deep time.

From the Publisher:Cladistics?the science of comparison?is transforming the way paleontologists view evolution. In Search of Deep Time strips away conventional assumptions about the evolution of life to reveal a world that may be far stranger and more humbling than had been previously imagined. The concept of deep time was first used by John McPhee to describe intervals of time incomprehensibly greater than our daily experience. Henry Gee explains the rise of cladistics as the best technique for making sense of the organic changes that unfold within deep time.

Annotation:In this challenging work, a science writer reasons that paleontologists should use modern technological and analytical tools to develop their discipline into a more rigid science. He details the techniques that he believes could transform paleontologists from students of geological cause-and-effect relationships to more traditional, evidence-based scientists who are beholden to the scientific method.

Praise

American Scientist"Henry Gee is a senior science writer for Nature, but he was trained as a paleontologist and is thus in an ideal position to write a popular account of a major revolution in scientists' approach to the fossil record. But this is not impartial outsider's account: It is a passionate advocacy of the new perspective by someone who actually participated in the revolution....The two great strengths of Gee's account are its iconoclastic destruction of many popular evolutionary scenarios and the author's intimate knowledge of the personalities and events surrounding the revolution." - Peter J. Bowler March 2000